


Renaissance

by sad_bi_cowboy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Graphic Birth Imagery, Graphic Description, Graphic Imagery, Hannibal Flash Fic #003, Image Prompt, M/M, Painting, Recreational Drug Use, psychedelics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sad_bi_cowboy/pseuds/sad_bi_cowboy
Summary: He managed to make his way over onto the rug next to Hannibal, who was contorting his left hand so much so that the tendons seemed ready to burst from his skin and squinting at it,  obviously using his own body as a reference image - a good sign that he was long gone. Will took a canvas of his own and leaned against Hannibal as he thought of what he should create.Something red, he decided.---------Hannibal and Will get high and paint things. This goes exactly as expected.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27
Collections: Hannibal Flash Fic #003





	Renaissance

The tea had gone down so, so easily, settling in his belly and warming him to the core as he gazed at Hannibal across their roughly hewn kitchen table, sipping at his own steaming mug. Maybe that should have been an indication of how their night was going to go, but, alas, the damage was done, and there was no going back. 

He could tell that Hannibal felt it sooner than he did, his pupils blowing wide as dinner plates and him developing an intense fascination with the rough, pink scar tissue in the hollow of Will’s cheek within twenty minutes of his last sip. Will was content to sit with the warmth in his stomach and enjoy a chemically uninhibited Hannibal (although, with the recent decriminalization and medical legalization in Argentina, along with the general availability of weed in cities, it was not a completely foreign sight), at least until the edges of his vision began to swim as the psilocybin finally hit his system. 

Still maintaining enough sense to take the butcher knife away from Hannibal, who had picked it out of the butcher’s block and was too close to testing it’s edge for Will’s comfort, Will had steered them into their living room where he had set up some cheap paints and canvases for them both to entertain themselves with. Hannibal swayed where he sat, gazing intently at the center of his blank canvas for a long while before choosing a yellow paint and spreading it over its entirety. Will found himself becoming very interested in a framed sketch of Hannibal’s on the wall, the gentle graphite strokes wiggling more and more the longer he looked, until the original subject of the sketch was unrecognizable. 

He managed to make his way over onto the rug next to Hannibal, who was contorting his left hand so much so that the tendons seemed ready to burst from his skin and squinting at it, obviously using his own body as a reference image - a good sign that he was long gone. Will took a canvas of his own and leaned against Hannibal as he thought of what he should create. 

Something  _ red _ , he decided. 

A sudden idea came to him, black edges taking over his vision, the image formed as if burned permanently into his retinas. 

It was a tree that he had discovered on their property during one of his many late evening walks, so old a gnarled that the trunk had come to create a sort of hollow, mysterious and dark, with several smaller offshoots of the roots pouring out of the opening to merge with the root systems of smaller, younger trees nearby. He had felt like there were dark, burning eyes watching him as he had inspected it. 

The thought hadn’t made his skin crawl nearly as much as it should have. 

Will let himself surface from the vision when he felt a soft vibration against his bicep. Hannibal was humming to himself - Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” it sounded like - his voice echoing deep in his chest as he swiped his paintbrush through some deep violet paint and moved it back to the canvas. Even through his haze of psychedelics, Will could make out the hands taking shape, the stylized joints of the knuckles almost as gnarled as the roots of his tree. He wrenched his attention away from the swirling colors on Hannibal’s canvas and turned it back to his own. 

He outlined the cavern of the trunk in dark brown, his movements sloppy and disjointed as opposed to Hannibal’s almost infuriatingly smooth ones. The results were a blocky, rough rendition of the vivid memory, even the softer curves of the roots showing sharpened edges borne of the twitches of his hand and the wavering of his eyes. For his next design he chose pure black. 

The paint seemed to almost put a hole right through the canvas, the black soaking up what little light there was in the living room and nearly disorienting him. Still, he pressed on. 

It was the creature that had long accompanied him and Hannibal, even after the encephalitis was through turning his brains into liquid and his mind into a demon’s playground. One half of the antlers curled over the edges of the cavern while the others disappeared into shadow, and a long-fingered hand reached out of the darkness, grasping at air. 

The eyes he painted a glaring red, despite never seeing them red himself. Maybe if he saw the creature now, it would be different. He was reborn, after all. 

That stray thought gave him yet another idea, as he finished the navy blue background and covered the ground in smears of green and brown. He started on the outline of a man crumpled on the ground in front of the tree. This man is naked, his pelvis and legs curled in the fetal position while his torso is twisted up towards the navy sky. One arm is bent beside him while the other is above his head, his hand just barely brushing the top of the mop of curls that Will had painted in. It is almost a swoon. 

Surprisingly, the psychedelics didn’t inhibit him from adding in those small details: the white highlights of the moon on the tree and the man, the contrast of the bright red blood dripping from the creature’s long fingers and spilling out from the depths of the cavern to surround the man on the ground. Will knows how blood actually looks in the moonlight, but the effect was extremely pleasing to his intoxicated mind, so he continued. He chose to cover the man in blood as well, although he knew in his own mind that none of it was his subject’s. 

For adding in the blood, Will had forgone a brush entirely, choosing instead to cover his fingers and smear it where he saw fit. In a sick, substance addled action, he brought his dripping fingers to his lips as if to taste the blood of their most recent kill. Thankfully, his coordination was not the best, and Hannibal chose that moment to be finished with his own work. He caught Will’s hand with his own before it could make it to his mouth, staining his fingers a blood red. They stared at each other, unfocused and almost unable to speak, before they turned their attentions to Will’s painting. 

It was a scene of a birth. A grotesque, perverted version of one, to be sure, but a birth nonetheless, the cavern of the tree the womb, and the man on the ground the clear product of the carnage. Whether the creature in the shadows was a midwife or an unwelcome, unwanted visitor was unclear. The paint was still wet and puddled in some places, causing light to shine off of the spots and give the impression they were pools of fresh blood. 

Hannibal looked at Will again. He looked enraptured, eyes wide in wonder, his pupils huge and shining. Will brought a hand up to touch him, leaving a red, bloody-looking handprint across the left side of his face, the individual lines of his fingers distinct as they travelled over the bridge of Hannibal’s nose, over the ridge of his cheekbone and brow. Hannibal clasped their stained hands together, his movements sloppy and uncoordinated - so unlike him.

“It’s beautiful.” 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is something I made...
> 
> Had to reupload because of a settings issue with the collection.
> 
> Full disclosure I have not done magic mushrooms or psychedelics of any kind, but I did do some research before I wrote this, so I hope there's nothing too awfully inaccurate here. I do smoke a lot of weed so that probably shows a little bit because I know how I get when I'm really stoned.


End file.
